Blocking the takeover of Origin Energy was in the national interest

AustralianSuper did the nation a service in blocking the takeover of Origin Energy, which its suitors were looking to pick up for a bargain - to the detriment of us all.

The sale of Origin Energy for a song has been thwarted.

Thank goodness for the cocktail of greed and wisdom – wrapped up in good old-fashioned intelligent, if not necessarily enlightened, self-interest – that drove industry super fund Australian Super.

But for AusSuper – and no thanks at all to the board of directors of Origin Energy – two very undesirable things would have happened on Monday. The ownership and control of a big chunk of Australia’s energy future – including also the profits from supplying the rest of the world with the Aussie gas to be denied to actual Aussies, by weak and woke boards and even woker and spineless and/or brainless politicians – would have passed into the hands of foreign controllers and owners.

Secondly, Australians as investors, would have been denied the opportunity to share in the profits and dividends and also even the tax revenues of both those futures.

The first of them is our increasingly bleak domestic energy future. The second future is the rest of the world more than happy to gorge itself on our gas. But at least, with the profits – and tax revenues, such as they are – continuing to stay at home, thanks to AusSuper. The numbers on the Origin vote to sell itself and those big chunks of our future were pretty clear.

But for AusSuper voting its 17.5 per cent against the proposal, making the majority of the 31 per cent “no” vote, the deal would easily have garnered the 75 per cent “yes” required. Why did AusSuper vote “no”? Very simply, because it saw two things.

The foreign duo Brookfield and MidOcean Energy were just not paying enough, if one properly understood and assessed the profits to come from energy over the rest of the 2020s and 2030s.

Parallel with that, if Origin disappeared from the ASX, Origin shareholders would have found it difficult to

find “another Origin” at value to invest the cash they got from selling.

Apart from the actual $20bn to be paid to Origin holders, Brookfield-MidOcean’s big “selling point” was the promise of investing a further

$20bn-$30bn in accelerating Origin’s (and Australia’s)

so-called “energy transition”.

This big spend even impressed the ACCC, which used it as the basis for waving through a deal, which it

had decided was actually

anti-competitive.

The promise should have been in fact the gigantic flashing red light.

Do you really think the takeover duo were embarked on spending $40bn-$50bn to play Father Christmas to Australian investors and energy users?

To give the first a big price for their shares, the second cheap energy tomorrow?

No. They were intent on reaping handsome profits on both – on both the $20bn paid to buy Origin, and then the $20bn-$30bn they “promised” to pour into the “energy transition”. And who do you think those profits would have come from? Australian energy users, in higher prices.

Australian taxpayers, via the lush handouts being given in this energy transition – to lunacy. Australian taxpayers again, from the tax deductions to be gleaned from it all.

Yes, much of that will also flow from the continuing Origin. But at least it will flow largely to Australian investors, thanks to AusSuper.

Originally published as Blocking the takeover of Origin Energy was in the national interest